Great Carina Nebula, NGC3372

Located in the Carina constellation we find the Great Carina Nebula that spans for over 300 light years and lies about 8,500 light-years away from Earth. The nebula has within its boundaries the large Carina OB1 association and several related open clusters, including numerous O-type stars and several Wolf–Rayet stars.

The nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies. Although it is four times as large as and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known due to its location in the southern sky. It was discovered by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope.

We can find several interesting objects in this wide field annotated image. In the upper left of the image we find the Gabriela Mistral Nebula consisting of an emission nebula of glowing gas (IC 2599) surrounding the small open cluster of stars (NGC 3324). Next to it, the larger NGC 3293 Star Custer, and above it the Loden 153 emission nebula. In the center of the image we also find η (Eta) Carinae, abbreviated to η Car, formerly known as η Argus, that is a stellar system containing at least two stars with a combined luminosity greater than five million times that of the Sun. The Keyhole Nebula or the Trumpler 14 Star Cluster are some of the most remarkable deep sky objects around the core of the Great Carina Nebula.

The image was captured last July 2024 during my last trip to the Kalahari desert, Tivoli Astrofarm, Namibia. This Bortle 1 dark sky it’s a really great place to capture deep sky images. I used my small 300mm focal length refractor to capture almost 9 hours of narrow band data. I also gathered short 30″ R,G,B images that have been captured to preserve the star colors (not saturated in its cores). The narrow band processing has been done following the color mapping known as the Foraxx Palette, that uses tha hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emission filters data in order to get the best contrast of the image. Surrounding the high emission areas of the center of the image we can see massive red clouds of gas that are detected thanks to the use of the Ha filter.

The image covers an area of 4º05′ x 2º58′ at a resolution of 2.59″/pixel.

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